legal, ethical, and professional issues in security and risk management

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legal, ethical, and professional issues in security and risk management

Top Four Risk Control Strategies in Information Security

Thoroughly integrating successful risk control efforts into your information security
strategic plan relies on preemptive measures. Your security team must seek out and
address cybersecurity infrastructure weak points to prevent attacks. At the same time,
they must locate threats and remain ready to respond should a vulnerability be exploited
or accidentally triggered.

The top four proactive risk control strategies in information security are:

 Continuous risk scanning

 Detection and response
 Third party risk management
 Advanced risk analytics
In addition to these preemptive practices, your information security strategy should
include ongoing compliance and patch management efforts along with predefining an
incident response and recovery plan.
Watch the full webinar!
 

Risk Control Strategy #1: Continuous Risk Scanning

Your security team cannot watch every facet of your IT environment all the time; that’s
what continuous monitoring software and services provide. A critical aspect of your
organization’s threat and vulnerability management efforts is scanning for cybersecurity
gaps that put potential attack targets at greater risk, particularly your most valuable
assets.
Your cybersecurity architecture and asset inventory must be monitored continuously to
address existing vulnerabilities and identify new ones over time. These efforts ensure that
emerging cybercriminal techniques cannot exploit them.
RSI Security’s threat and vulnerability management services include inventorying all
assets within your IT environment and conducting threat modeling, which assigns risk
and designates the highest priority elements. Continuous testing and scanning notify your
security team of risky vulnerabilities so that you can deploy patches and update
configurations accordingly.

 
 

Risk Assessments
Before you begin monitoring all of your network assets, you first need to identify them
along with the likelihood of threat occurrence and resulting organizational impact.
Conducting a risk assessment will determine and document such. Risk assessments may
also be required as part of your compliance efforts (e.g., the HIPAA Security Rule).

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides risk assessment

guidance for developing this foundation of your information security strategy framework
in Special Publication 800-30.

Risk Control Strategy #2: Detection and Response

Responding to threats only after they reveal themselves is too late. Therefore, in addition
to continuous scanning for vulnerabilities, your security team needs to hunt for any
indication of advanced persistent threats (APT) that may evade detection.
Threat hunting combines forefront threat intelligence with iterative investigation
processes to detect anomalies in network and user activity. Some organizations employ a
threat hunter as a tier-three member of their security operations center (SOC) team.
However, one of the most significant challenges threat hunters face is differentiating
between real threats and false positives. Misidentification can waste valuable time and
resources.

An alternative to a full-time threat hunter is partnering with a managed security services

provider (MSSP) to enhance your security team’s knowledge and capabilities. Managed
detection and response services seek out threat indicators, investigate them, initiate
response plans, and conduct root cause analysis to prevent recurring incidents.
 

Risk Control Strategy #3: Third Party Risk Management

The risk your organization faces extends beyond your own IT environment. Especially
with the proliferation of cloud service integrations, organizations must be mindful of the
risks posed by partners connected to their network. Your partners’ ability to contend with
the same threat challenges you face places your cybersecurity’s efficacy at stake.
Additionally, your regulatory compliance may depend on a third party’s cybersecurity
and data protection efforts.

Third party risk management requires vendor-focused risk assessments and visibility to

determine how partners’ potential vulnerabilities become your own—and which efforts
neutralize them.
 
 Risk Control Strategy #4: Advanced Risk Analytics
The best preparation for managing threats is simulating real attacks that identify
vulnerabilities to address and train your security team on appropriate response tactics.
The advanced analytic data collected from test results provides an insightful roadmap of
potential entry points, gaps, and misconfigurations for your security team to address.

Penetration testing achieves precisely that with pen-testers evaluating your cybersecurity

infrastructure to determine potential attack vectors. Penetration tests can follow white,
grey, or black box methods that provide testers with varying levels of environmental
insight.
Your organization’s penetration testing should evaluate your entire IT environment,
including:

 Firewalls
 Network security
 Cloud computing
 Web applications
 Hardware
 Mobile devices
Compliance requirements